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Based on our earlier conversation, do I understand correctly that SSHRC funding flat and others up, or does pulling out that Indirect Costs mean SSHRC’s budget is actually increasing? Not that it makes any difference if the gov’t falls.

SSHRC funding increases have been 50% of CIHR and NSERC for a few years. The indirects are based on tricouncil funding totals and apply indiscriminately to each program (i.e. a SSHRC dollar is equivalent to an NSERC dollar in terms of accruing indirects). The extra $10 million in indirects is proportionate to the increase in the tricouncil base (direct) budgets (approx. 25% of total). It’s a little like an HST on grants… but helps institutions to pay for the cost of supporting research (heat, light, intellectual property, etc). NIH indirects are substantially higher, in the range of 50+%.

Might want tot start with the Brain Research Fund which is not being channelled through CIHR (which received $15 million for all health research). Brain Canada was formerly called Neuroscience Canada and has admirable goals. However, this sets another precedent for funding of health research through specific interest groups (previous one-offs included the Terry Fox Foundation). Is this the best use of public money for research? What drove the governments specific interest in this area?

Robust peer review is the process by which research investment becomes strategic.

Breakthrough discoveries in science (like the discovery of electricity, invention of the transistor, creation of vaccines) are stifled when the distribution system of research funding is thought to be unfair. When it is effective, the peer review process applies the expertise of the scientific community, the national brain trust, in setting strategy for national investment in science. Scientific peer review is a robust system that encourages and seriously considers high risk and long term research strategies within the constraints of fairness and accountability in the distribution of funds. Canadians should insist on a distribution system for research and development funding which empowers those citizens most prepared to assess the quality, impact and risk of proposed research to set the strategy.

Scientific research investments selected by scientists through effective peer review are strategically superior and less risky than research investments made by politicians motivated by short-term outcomes.